The Power Of 10

HTC’s flagship phones have always been some of our favourite smartphones to play around with. With many brands now competing in that same premium space as of late, how does its latest and greatest, the HTC 10 fare? Read on to find out how it did during our short time with it.

Sporting a 5.2 inch display with a resolution of 2,560×1,440 pixels, the HTC 10 is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor, with 4GBs of RAM and 32GBs of storage space, which is expandable via a microSD slot, which allows the phone’s storage to go up to 2TBs. The HTC 10 also runs Google’s latest Android 6.0 operating system, codenamed Marshmallow.

One of the best things about the HTC 10, we feel is its insistence to keep to a form factor that provides users with a big display real estate, but stops short of being too unwieldy. The aluminium unibody design makes a return of course, but this time around, there is a thick chamfered bezel at the back of the phone, making it look considerably thick.

Also located at the back is the 12MP Ultrapixel 2 camera, which takes some pretty brilliant looking shots both in places where there are plenty of or lacking light. HTC has also added manual controls in the form of the Pro mode in its camera app, allowing users to control the camera’s settings to shoot photos in certain ways.

Performance-wise, the HTC 10 is easily on par with the best flagship smartphones out there in the market right now. Right from the various benchmark numbers, to real life usage scenarios, the HTC 10 does not miss a beat. You can install pretty much any app on it and the phone will run it with no issues whatsoever.

Battery life is also a big plus for the HTC 10, as the 3,000mAh battery not only lasts you throughout the entire day and a bit more on a single charge, the phone also sports a USB Type-C connector that is QuickCharge 3.0 certified, which charges the phone from empty up to 50% in just half an hour.

As an extra, audiophiles will also be happy to know that the HTC 10 supports end-to-end 24bit Hi-Res sound, which is previously only seen on Sony phones. The earphones that come with the device also is capable of driving the lossless format without any noticeable loss in quality.

CHIP CONCLUDE: The HTC 10 comes in at the time when the company sorely needs a powerful flagship to lift it up, and the device does exactly that admirably.